Escaping Into Faith by Norm Grant

November 11, 2017, 07:34 PM

Norm Grant’s spiritually transformative You Want Me to… What? Risking Life Change to Answer God’s Call offers an engaging and dynamic voice that everyone can relate to. His allegories, anecdotes, and witticisms deliver a powerful message while amusing readers and consistently maintaining their attention. Norm Grant asks us the difficult questions: What if God is calling us to action? What if we’re too wrapped up in the daily routine of life to listen? “What if He were calling us to participate with Him in regenerating and reviving our lives, His church, the country, and the world?” He addresses the deepest fears in all of us, the feelings of unworthiness of being rescued and if we will really be saved if we let go, dispelling our excuses and fears; “That’s what this book is about: inspiring all of us to write about what happens when we ‘let go’ and put our faith into action.”

You Want Me to… What? Encourages deep self-reflection and gives rise to seeking our deeper meaning, proposing that we find a way to put God at the top of the to-do list, and to dispel the trivialities of life that drown out his voice. Our fears of not being special enough or not worthy of having God in our lives are removed by the real and down-to-earth tone with which Norm Grant approaches finding God. He uses stories we can all relate to in our daily lives, regardless of how special or inspired of a life we lead. He tells stories of ordinary people and gives us ordinary life scenes to relate to our own lives. The strength of the stories lies in their simplicity and universality, as everyone can relate to these experiences, such as the completion of a to-do list and selecting a video to rent.

His pop culture references lend to the real tone and the applicability of his ideas in our lives, while keeping the message more engaging and entertaining, referencing everything from Facebook pages to U2 and Mr. Holland’s Opus. His writing technique encourages continual reflection throughout the book, proposing questions and offering unfinished stories for the readers’ mental completion based on their own experiences, and the role God fills, or could fill in the future, in their lives. This book is not only for people who have a strong relationship with God, but also for people who are exploring the possibility of a stronger relationship with God, repeatedly asking “What if?” “What if… He’s calling out to us to risk jumping in?” “What if He were calling us to participate with Him in regenerating and reviving our lives, His church, the country, and the world?” Norm Grant does not write from a pulpit, but rather from the position of someone who has had to ask himself these very questions. A former religious critic and top producer in the commercial real estate industry, he too, has experienced times in his life when God’s voice was drowned out by the to-do list, the quest for financial success, and daily life. He writes from the stance of someone who did not make God a priority until a feeling of emptiness pervaded his greatest financial and career coup, and he finally had to step back and listen to God.

Reading You Want Me to… What? will undoubtedly stimulate thought and reflection, as it prepares you to hear God’s voice. So, ask yourself: “What if He were calling me to step away from the comfortable routines — to experience the amazing, the impossible, the God-ordained, life-transforming moments that He’s longing to do in and through each and every one of us?”